—2—
In the Bureau of Tracing and Locations, all training was vital. The BTL instructors had hammered that into Daragon Swan from the day he’d entered their ranks. Since his old life had ended at the Falling Leaves monastery more than a year ago, training filled the void.
Many of the Bureau’s recruits washed out in the first few weeks, but the BTL officials had no intention of letting Daragon fail. He was too special, his “inner vision” too rare. The coaches reminded him of this often, used it as an excuse to push him harder. He had finally completed the first phase of indoctrination.
Three stony-faced coaches climbed into a hovercar and punched in coordinates. Daragon settled in beside them, small in stature and wiry. He had dark hair, almond eyes that flashed in the light. Now, he squared his shoulders, kept his face expressionless. He didn’t know where the instructors were taking him, and he didn’t dare ask.
The emerald-green vehicle raised up onto its selected impedance path, and official COM override codes kicked in as it coasted toward the nearby bayshore.
“Are you ready for this?” one coach asked him, his gruff voice suddenly loud in the white-noise.
“I don’t know what to expect.”
“Be ready anyway.”
Daragon clung to his hopes. This was part of becoming a crucial member of the BTL, a group that appreciated him for his special abilities and skills. The Splinter monks had sympathized with his unusual handicap—unlike virtually everyone else, he was completely unable to hopscotch—but the Bureau didn’t belittle him for that. Instead, they saw it as an advantage.
Daragon had the potential to be a great Inspector, perhaps the best, thanks to his quirk, his ability to see identities. He compared it to a blind man having highly sensitive hearing. Craving acceptance, he could not disappoint them.
The BTL used a broad spectrum of methods for locating and tracking people as they moved through a society where physical appearance and identity could be made meaningless by body swapping. Some of the Bureau Inspectors were slightly telepathic; some were gifted database surfers who had a particular rapport with COM—the pervasive computer/organic matrix—and some were just intuitive detectives. Daragon had to learn everything.
Be ready anyway. Always.
The hovercar left the main traffic patterns behind, cruising high above malls and pedestrian streets. They wove through a complex of warehouses and cranes and launch platforms on sprawling docks that extended like pseudopods into the Pacific. Daragon looked at the scrambled Brownian motion of commerce, bustling workers, small and large craft skating like water striders across the ocean, bullet-boats tugging barges into port.
Far out on the water, towering high enough to be an artificial island, stood a massive offshore drilling rig. It had been abandoned in place, modified into a new sort of building. The platform stood on stilts, a citadel above the waves. Daragon knew the main complex itself was protected under the sea. BTL Headquarters. They headed directly toward it.
The hovercar landed on a metal-plated dock that extended to the edge of the calm water. The emerald doors raised up like an insect shrugging its carapace, and Daragon emerged, standing straight in his dark trainee jumpsuit. The fresh wind struck his face, laden with salt and iodine.
The man who met him on the platform was well muscled, his stomach like a washboard beneath his tight shirt, the tendons in his neck like cords. The man seemed to occupy a much larger physical space than his actual body required. His chestnut hair was short and dark, just beginning to speckle with gray. His eyes were wide-set, an olive-brown. “My name is Mordecai Ob. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
“Certainly, sir!” Ob was the Bureau Chief, a powerful man who kept himself isolated, ambitious but rarely seen except by those in the inner sanctum of the BTL. Why would a person of such importance waste time greeting a mere new trainee?
“Walk with me to my offices, Daragon. I’ll be going to the mainland soon, but over the next few days I intend to show you more of how the Bureau really works.” Ob shook his hand with a muscular grip. “We expect great things of you, young man.”